Nikki and the Squirrel

by Marina Kurten, Helsinki, Finland

Of the two, Nikki is the avid hunter, and has been since she was a baby. She's brought me heaps of moles and even a bird or two each summer when we are out at our cottage. Frank didn't learn to hunt until he was ten years old. Until then, he was of the unwavering opinion that cat food comes in tins. Any tin. It doesn't matter if it has a picture of a cat or a bunch of green beans on it, a tin always contained cat food in Frank's mind.

The other summer, when we were out on our island, Nikki discovered a squirrel's nest in a tree at the back of our house. Up she went into the high pinetree. The squirrel must have been a female with a litter in her nest. Nikki is as agile as any cat, but compared to a squirrel, any cat is like an elephant. When the squirrel spotted Nikki scrabbling for her nest, she set up an incredible racket, chattering insults and screaming blue murder, and when that didn't have any effect, the squirrel started running in circles around Nikki.

At this point, Nikki noticed that she was pretty far above ground level by this time. She had been so intent on the nest and the intriguing sounds that came from it, that she hadn't noticed that it was so high up. She was seized with vertigo. Panic! All she could do was hang on to the tree trunk for dear life, while the squirrel kept running round and round her, chattering all the time. Since Nikki stayed frozen to the spot for so long, the squirrel finally decided she wasn't dangerous any longer, and went home to her babies.

When the chattering stopped, Nikki slowly came to her senses and eased herself, inch by slow inch, down from the tree. After this, she's left the squirrels and their nest in peace.

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